The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law

Extract

The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law. By John Fabian Witt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 322p. $55.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

The development of workmen's compensation legislation is a subject of considerable historical interest. As the first major social insurance program adopted in the United States, it is also a story that may shed light on the broader question of why welfare state development in the United States differs so markedly from that observed in many other industrialized countries. In this engaging book, John Fabian Witt traces the development of legal ideas and public responses to the problem of industrial accidents during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is first and foremost a legal history, but it should nonetheless be of considerable interest to political scientists and, in particular, those interested in the subject of welfare state development. Witt argues that the problem of industrial accidents led to a series of legal and institutional responses that involved a fundamental reconceptualization of the problem of risk and that helped influence the subsequent development of the American welfare state through the New Deal years. More provocatively, he suggests that these legal and institutional responses were a contingent or accidental outcome. Alternative responses to the problem of industrial accidents might have led to an alternative path of welfare state development.